Seeing the Future

October 8th, 2012

Thiruvananthapuram where I live and work is a town where most persons speak only Malayalam. This is not surprising of course. What was momentous for me, therefore, was to be part of the crowd in a rock concert here last night by the fusion band 'Indian Ocean'. Its members, who speak only Hindi and English, to an ecstatic crowd performed songs from Bihar, one in an Adivasi tongue, and a two-thousand-year-old hymn in Aramaic. Effortlessly, they managed to do what India's politicians have failed to since the national movement ended in 1947, unite a diverse people. On a tropical night in a remote corner of the country one could see a possible future for India. Her civil society has the potential of moulding the politics.